The “Sportpark Styrum” in Mülheim an der Ruhr is a family-friendly, intergenerational sport and neighbourhood park that offers low-threshold but also challenging and unusual activities.

The new sports park, located on the site of a former cinder pitch, was created with the extensive involvement of local clubs, residents, athletes, and children at nearby schools and nurseries. The diverse offerings, such as the Ninja Run, the beach volleyball courts, the interactive goal wall and the varied outdoor fitness equipment, as well as the covered artificial turf pitch, are integrated into a flowing and interconnected sports landscape that invites you to enjoy various activities and encounters.

The extensive meadows form a quiet contrast to the challenges of the sports ground. They offer space for relaxing, picnicking and working on balance using sports elements integrated into the landscape, but they also serve an ecological function as rainwater retention or as a habitat for insects. To provide for active break times, the small playground of the adjoining school has been modernised, and a new playground developed for older nursery-age and younger schoolchildren that prompts movement and exercise. (The school uses the sports park for physical education lessons.)

The surroundings of the sports hall, the local nursery and the foundation park are connected to the sports park and its sports landscape via the sports track. This helps to create synergies and opens up the previously enclosed park.

We see the low-threshold, broad and motivating sports offering within the park as a key that can also bring users closer to the supplementary offerings of the clubs and the cultural and educational institutions. This is backed up by firmly established on-site supervision.

Design: Planungsbüro DTP Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH

Client: City of Mühlheim an der Ruhr

Project location: Germany, Mühlheim

Planning and realisation: 2018-2022

Photos: Nikolai Benner